Chorus vs Audio MIDI Setup: is the free route enough?

The short version

Audio MIDI Setup is not a demo or a stripped-down version of anything. It is the real mechanism, built into every Mac, and it is what Chorus itself sits on top of. The honest question this page is trying to answer is not which one "works", it is whether the convenience Chorus adds is worth paying for, given that the underlying grouping is identical either way.

What Audio MIDI Setup can already do, for free

Audio MIDI Setup lives in Applications > Utilities, comes with every Mac, and costs nothing to use. Click the + button in the bottom-left corner of its device list and you can build a Multi-Output Device: tick two or more outputs and macOS plays the same audio through all of them at once. The same + button builds an Aggregate Device on the input side, combining several microphones or interfaces into one.

Once it exists, the Multi-Output Device shows up like any other output in the Sound menu, and you select it the same way you would select a single speaker. This is the whole mechanism Chorus itself relies on to group outputs. There is no separate, better version of it hiding behind a $4.99 paywall. You are looking at the actual technology right now, for free, in an app Apple already put on your Mac.

Where the free route runs out

Building the Multi-Output Device is the easy part. Living with it day to day is where four gaps show up, and all four are well documented in our guide to the greyed-out volume slider.

• The volume slider stops working. A Multi-Output Device is not a real device with its own volume, so macOS has nothing for the slider or your volume keys to control. It greys out, and you have to open Audio MIDI Setup and drag each real device's own Master slider by hand, every time.
• There is no per-app routing at all. Every app shares whatever output is selected. A call cannot stay on your headphones while music plays through the room; Audio MIDI Setup has no concept of routing one app differently from another.
• It never switches on its own. Unplug a display or connect a new pair of headphones and the Multi-Output Device does not notice. You have to go back into Audio MIDI Setup and rebuild or reselect it manually.
• There is nowhere to save more than one setup. No named arrangements to switch between, no keyboard shortcuts, no menu-bar shortcut to the app itself. Every change means finding Audio MIDI Setup in Applications > Utilities and starting again.

What Chorus adds on top of the exact same mechanism

Chorus does not replace Audio MIDI Setup's mechanism with something new. It uses the exact same output-grouping technology built into macOS, the same one behind every Multi-Output Device. What changes is everything wrapped around it.

Groups replace the Multi-Output Device with one that has a real, working volume: move a single slider or press your volume keys and every device in the group moves together, with its own balance so a quieter speaker can be brought up to meet a louder one. Per-App Audio does something Audio MIDI Setup has no answer to at all, separate volume and output per app, so a call sits on your headphones while everything else plays through the room. Auto-Switch follows your devices as they connect and disconnect, so a group survives unplugging a display without a trip back into Audio MIDI Setup. Keyboard Shortcuts let you bind any group, output or input to a shortcut, and the whole thing lives in one menu-bar panel instead of a separate utility buried in Applications > Utilities. If you drive things from elsewhere, Automation triggers Chorus from Raycast, Shortcuts or a Stream Deck.

None of that is new audio technology. It is an interface, built honestly on top of what Apple already gives you for free, plus the pieces Apple's own tool leaves out. Chorus does not do EQ, audio effects, recording, or DAW-style routing between apps; if you want any of that, look elsewhere.

Is the free route enough for you?

For some people, yes, plainly. If you build a Multi-Output Device once, rarely change it, and do not mind opening Audio MIDI Setup to nudge a device's volume every so often, the free route is a perfectly reasonable answer, and you should take it. Nothing about Chorus does that job better in a way that would justify paying for it.

For everyone else, the honest case is friction, not capability. If the greyed-out slider catches you out weekly, if you keep wanting one app to sound different from another and cannot, if plugging in headphones means a trip to Applications > Utilities before anything sounds right, that friction is exactly what $4.99 buys you out of. You are not paying for different technology. You are paying for not having to think about it.

For the step-by-step on building a Multi-Output Device, see Apple's own guide to Audio MIDI Setup.

Frequently asked questions